


Flawless

by KarkaHatchlings



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Dreams, Exploration, F/M, Foot Fetish, Kink Exploration, Self-Doubt, Smut, Trials of the Nine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 21:31:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16167326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KarkaHatchlings/pseuds/KarkaHatchlings
Summary: Again this one comes.THE BEST SEEK TO TOUCH TO KNOWdo they understand whyA M E R E T A S T E D E S T R O Y S T H E U N W O R T H Y





	Flawless

When he dreamed, it was of imperfection.  His thoughts raced around tiny errors in calculation, minute missteps, a drift of a few centimeters in this or that wrong direction.  Mistakes accumulated into a crushing burden of flaws too heavy to lift and too numerous to count. He, who had nothing to fear from deadly velocity or searing energies in the waking world, was helpless against failure within his mind.

Daybreak was the hard and distant light of the Sun through the polarized viewing slit of the cockpit.  It illuminated his ghost where the little machine hovered above a side console with its eye dimmed and shell drooping.  The points slowly rose and fell in imitation of sleep’s measured breaths. He stretched in the narrow seat to shake off the last of the fitful slumber.  Despite the brutal fighting of the previous day, the only pain left was the cramped ache of sleeping in the antique jumpship.

The detritus of dreams was much harder to disperse.  Its hideous weight was still pushing him down in a way that neither his armor nor his Light could lift.  When he shaded his eyes to look through the slit window past the curve of Titan beneath him, the hard and merciless stars set in the backdrop of black met his gaze.

He knew where he had to go.

A few jabs at the ship’s controls muted the occasional updates from his fireteam to hissing silence.  They were somewhere in orbit too, but this wasn’t something combined fire and joined Light could bring down.  The battered and time-worn surfaces of his ship reflected little as he slipped it from the established lanes of gravity’s grasp and pointed its nose out into the deep.

“We’re going here again?”  Much later, the question intruded on his thoughts.  Perhaps his ghost had been awake or aware the entire time, but this was the first he noticed it roused itself from the facsimile of slumber.  It hovered at his shoulder, watching the ship’s instrumentation try to make sense of the strange physics surrounding the Spire during their final approach.  “I guess there is unfinished business.”

On the surface he emerged from the shade of the arrival grotto into pitiless desert light.  Ground blended with horizon and sky in an oppressive white canvas, devoid of imperfection. Only the moan of wind in unknown distances competed with the soft metallic sound of the Spire’s aerial wreath meshing endlessly with itself.  His booted footfalls on the dais were sharp and distinct when he crossed between the pillars toward the Emissary.

His ghost darted suspiciously around his head with its eye cast outward.  “You don’t have anything to prove, you know,” it said when it satisfied itself there was no immediate threat.  It turned toward him, one prong dipped in a frown, “we helped bring down the Red Legion. The City is safe again.  If you need to test yourself, that’s what the Crucible is for. It’s been far better for you.”

The Warlock nodded absently but kept his pace as he walked past the Emissary.  If she paid him any more notice than he did his ghost’s reassurances, there was no sign.  

“You’re not losing any sleep over Lord Shaxx or Saladin and you’ve done a lot more getting killed with them watching.”

That caught his attention.  They were whipping through the air now, launched upward in a momentum-defying curve from the dais to the higher reaches of the Spire.  Either he would reach the upper platform or he would fall. It was not within his control, so he cocked his head to regard the little machine.

It drew back and its tone turned cajoling.  “Don’t be like that, I worry is all. You do your part,” it flicked its eye at the strange and sleek rifle slung on his back, “and I’m always here to do mine.”  

The pair had risen beyond the alabaster and amethyst platforms to the final, golden and shining heptagon.  Their landing was soft, in complete defiance of impulse and velocity. Here the Emissary floated impassively as elsewhere but the Warlock stopped a respectful distance from her.  “I know. Thank you,” he said, voice low and sincere, “I wouldn’t be here without you.”

Abashed, his ghost cast its eye down and vanished.  The Warlock straightened his shoulders and faced the Emissary once more.

“The one who understands.”  Her voice came from everywhere, but her lips remained pursed and expressionless.  As ever, she gave no other indication that she was aware of his presence.

When he undid the neck seals and hinged his gilded casque open he found the air chill and parched.  His gloves he peeled off next and tucked them, trawl vanes all a-rattle, into the helmet. The sunlight was scorching, but did nothing to heat the thin and dry air.  He set the helmet on the ground at his feet before he approached. “But I don’t.”

“Don’t you?  You understand in spite of yourself.  You struggle, you question, but in the end, you fight!”  The ferocity of the last word resonated between his ears.  

He swallowed hard against the bone-dry atmosphere.  “I didn’t come alone. There were others.”

The dark ribbons trailing from her garments coiled restlessly in the wind.  Her pale, thigh-length tunic and dark hood were of an open weave and the coarseness of it was apparent so close.  She floated perhaps a half-meter above the platform, and thus stared over his head despite being slightly shorter than he.

Subtle mirth, perhaps only imagined, colored the sourceless voice.  “They come for their own ends. Not like you. You seek to know that which comes.  Eager or not, you meet it.”

How they’d fought!  Jolly, plate-clad Fausten with his unassuming skill and hidden regrets, Reynard’s mercurial lips twisting between scowl and smile beneath her heavy helm, even Cee, somehow dazed and hapless even as she whirled and slew in flashes of arc energy; it had taken all of them to get here.  Their boisterous voices had been raised in celebration at the Spire as they ascended, careless of the intense, watchful mystery of the place.

All at once the weight of imperfection crashed on him.  It had been so close. It had only been in concert that they’d succeeded.  Had Rey missed that shot, or Fausten not warned them to fall back at just that moment, or he not devoured his foe’s corpus under an otherwise lethal rain of fire, if any single thing had changed!  He shrank from the outcome.

The Emissary hung suspended above the perfect center of raked concentric rings of granular mineral.  He took another step forward, close enough to touch her. His bootprint was the first mark apparent in the perfect, tended circles even though he’d seen them thoroughly disturbed by his fireteam on the previous visit.  Perhaps the grains curved around her like filings to some exotic monopole.

“More eager than not.” The knowing mirth was unmistakable now.

The warlock sank to his knees.  The salt was pushed up like a standing ripple where he settled.  “Then judge me,” he whispered.

No sound answered beyond the wind and tangled metal.

The Emissary was motionless with only her clothes acquiescing to wind and gravity’s pull.  Her feet hung at chest-level where he knelt, bobbing as she rose and fell minutely. 

It was difficult to stifle the quiver in his fingertips when he touched the sole of her right foot.  It was clean and uncalloused as if it had never touched the ground. Her skin was the cool of distant starlight on a clear and temperate evening.  She existed beyond the sun and biting wind.

He slid his hand along her smooth sole to cup her milk-white heel.  Above it, his other encircled her tapering ankle. Despite how ethereal she seemed, the skeletal framework underneath was unyielding.  The cord of her Achilles tendon was relaxed but firm. 

His fingers traced down from her ankle to the silken scallop of her instep.  The tremble had mostly subsided, but the caress still felt unconscionably bold.  Fighting the urge to be surreptitious, he looked up at the Emissary for any reaction.  Her eyes had not moved from where they were fixed upon the horizon. There was still only the howl of wind over far-off salt peaks and the whisper of weaving metal.

Rougher now, he explored her gentle curve of her arch with his palm, then kneaded with his fingertips.  The pliability of her soft skin, so impervious to the elements, excited him. It dimpled under his touch, then sprang back into place without any flush in the pearlescent surface.

He released her left foot, only to take up her right with growing enthusiasm.  Here he began high on her calf where the uneven border of the mysterious stain began.  No seam met his touch where her skin went from alabastrine to anthracite. The dark shade lurked below the surface somehow and lent a sharp contrast to the thin white cord tied about her ankle.  

Arrayed with perfect regularity in spacing, her toes were plump and round.  The warlock threaded his fingers between them and admired their darkness against the windburned pink of his knuckles.

The platform was like a display, it and the Spire visible for kilometers on the featureless salt flats, but he felt no sense of exposure.  Here they were the only people in the universe. With their recognition they granted existence to each other in this singular space.

He wrapped his hand around the thick of her calf and squeezed.  She was meaty, toned and filled his grip with luscious resiliency.  Beneath the short tunic she was no waif but a warrior somehow. 

For all she spoke of judgment, he felt none at his ongoing trespass.  Her passivity, poised forever on the edge of action, was a goad. When he stroked the back of a hand against the inside of her thigh just below where it fell into shadow under the hem of her tunic it was no longer innocent in exploration.  When he tangled himself in the rough twine around her ankle and pulled it tight it was with mounting arousal.

The body before him presented limited allure, of course.  The tunic rendered her mostly shapeless, and her face was broad, her mouth too wide to fit some ideal of beauty.  The markings on her visage were more exotic than complimentary, more war-paint than cosmetics. Still all at once he realized his attraction to her, why his breath caught and his blood quickened.  Here was embodied the perfect struggle. Omnipresent. Real. Ready. Relentless. 

She was so close.  It would only take the slightest change in position and their orbits would intersect.  With hands on her thigh and ankle as levers he bent her knee and brought her dark foot to meet his stooped head.

The pristine skin of her instep caressed his cheek.  Beneath it was resilient muscle backed with bone. He dragged his face along the top of her foot and could feel the web of veins hidden under its surface.

In the strange sky above, the star and its opposing vortex raced in circular counterpoint.  Dy lips brushed against the base of her toes and lingered.  Their shadows, man and woman, slowly leaned, stretched and swung around the pair.

His tongue met cool skin.  She tasted of nothing but the faintest hint of salt and perhaps that was only borne on the wind.  Mouth open, he encompassed the largest of her toes, then the next. He lapped at the digits with lascivious intensity and revelled in the sweet texture he found.  Smooth, even nails, tiny lines on the knuckle joints, infant-soft skin; he catalogued each flawless detail as he returned time and time again to marvel at the sensation anew.  In spite of the barren air his mouth watered in devouring hunger.

He burrowed his tongue worm-like into the crevices between her toes and sucked.  The Emissary’s formless and bassaridic sigh rang in the spaces between everything.  “A light on the horizon!”

Neither looked upon the other when finally the Warlock rose again.  Clumsy with need he replaced his gloves and helmet and turned from the Emissary.  The very apex of the Spire was only a little bit higher than the platform he stood upon.  The jump would be a simple matter for one borne by the Light as he was, but the Spire rejected those unworthy, like the lesser platforms did below.

Judgment.  Without looking back he took a short run at the edge and leapt.


End file.
